Open networking will take place from 3:30 to 7:00 in the T-Rex common area on the 5th floor.

What would it take to get biodiversity valued, planned for, and actively managed throughout our cities, counties, and bi-state region? This session will serve as a follow-up to the Biodiversity working group that convened at the 2017 Sustainability Summit and over the summer. At this session we will:

Discuss the working group's regional goal for biodiversity, with the intent of understanding how this goal affects you and your community

Share opportunities to stay engaged and help advance the effort

3:30-4:45 Session B: Green Schools Quest: Creating a Sustainable Future, One Project at a Time

The St. Louis region has a plethora of K-12 schools, each with their own unique needs, desires, and resources – and each in a unique position to advance sustainability. Through the Green Schools Quest, an annual project-based challenge issued by the U.S. Green Building Council – Missouri Gateway Chapter, local K-12 schools are paired with sustainability professionals and challenged to devise and implement no/low cost sustainability projects at their schools over a six month period of time. Over 100 schools have participated since the program’s launch four years ago. As the 2017-18 school year approaches, USGBC-MGC seeks mentors from our community to assist schools with project identification, implementation, resources, and documentation. This session will provide a brief overview of the program and mentor responsibilities, followed by the opportunity to hear directly from past schools and mentors as they share their stories of advancing K-12 sustainability.

Mentor Presenters:

Katie Belisle-Iffrig, Consultant, Center for Transformational School Leadership – speaking about her experience mentoring City Garden Montessori Charter School

5:15-6:30 Media Literacy and tools to combat misinformation

Join author and media professor Julie Smith as she examines the how and why of misinformation, the new structure of the news and what tools we can use as information consumers to determine what's real, meaningful, valid and true in this post-truth information age.

Julie has been teaching media literacy and media-related classes at the university level since 1997. She holds her B.A. in Public Relations from the University of Tulsa and her M.S. in Mass Communication from Southern Illinois University – Edwardsville. Julie currently teaches at both Webster University and SIUE.

She is the author of “Master the Media: How Teaching Media Literacy Can Save Our Plugged-In World” and over the last three years has traveled all over the U.S and Europe helping teachers and parents with media literacy, digital citizenship, classroom engagement and social media. Julie is currently working on a book advocating for more engagement in the college classroom.